Badges. . . We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges. . .

Do you remember the big fuss made by Team Obama and Mexico’s incompetent government a couple months back? Remember how all the carnage in Mexico was the result of automatic weapons being sold in the United States and then smuggled across the border to kill policemen? Wanna know the truth? It’s actually kind of scary. Read on. . .

Now at the outset, you know this story is bunk. Indeed, as you will recall from our article on guns, you can no longer buy new automatic weapons in the United States, and getting the older ones is extremely difficult. It’s also very difficult under the law to manufacture semi-automatic weapons that can be converted to full automatic. Not to mention that you can’t buy rockets and other real military hardware at all.

So where is this equipment coming from? Meet Los Zetas.

Who Is Los Zetas?

Mexico, like much of South-Central America, is beset by corruption. Local police are often for sale to the highest bidder. This has allowed various criminal enterprises (drug cartels, crime syndicates, smugglers) to all but turn Mexico in a series of small criminal kingdoms, with any attempt to combat these groups being frustrated by the complicity of local law enforcement.

To solve this problem, Mexico turned to their army. With the help of the United States, Mexico set up an elite anti-crime/counter-insurgency unit that it could send into any part of the country to impose order where the local authorities failed or refused, and to fight these criminal enterprises. This group, called the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), was trained in the full range of special forces tactics at Fort Bragg and is equipped with the latest in US special forces hardware. So far so good.

In the late 1990, Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen began recruiting GAFE members to act as protection. His top recruit, Lt. Arturo Guzmán Decena brought with him approximately 30 other GAFE members. They called themselves Los Zetas, for the radio code “Zeta” used by the Mexican military to identify leadership persons.

Upon the arrest of Guillen, Los Zetas set out on their own. Soon enough, they set up camps to train recruits, including ex-federal, state and local police. Eventually, this would increase the number of members in Los Zetas to around 4000 members.

(A rival gang, the Sinaloa Cartel, has established its own version of Los Zetas known as Los Negros.)

Not only does Los Zetas operate at a higher tactical level than local authorities, but they are also extremely well armed (body armor, Kevlar ballistic helmets, a variety of automatic weapons including 50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles, helicopters and a variety of explosives), and they make extensive use of wire tapping and cell phone tapping. Apparently, they also often masquerade as federal troops or police, using both federal uniforms and vehicles.

And what does this private army do? They collect debts, secure cocaine supply and trafficking routes, kidnap individuals, perform murder-for-hire, engage in extortion and money-laundering schemes, smuggle humans, and, most importantly, execute rivals. In that regard, they are known for incredible sadism and savagery. One common tactic, for example, involves putting their victim into a barrel of oil and setting the oil on fire -- this is reminiscent of the practice of “tiring” or “necklacing” practiced in Haiti and by the African National Congress in South Africa, where a tire is placed over the victims shoulders, filled with gasoline, and then set on fire.

Los Zetas also is known for monitoring and kidnapping journalists and their families, and they have hired gangs like the Texas Syndicate and MS-13 to carry out contract killings in within the United States. They are suspected in the recent murder of a popular politician and his family, though they deny involvement.

Threat To The Mexican Government

The fight between Los Zetas and the Mexican government has been so intense that many have feared the government would fall. Indeed, in February 2009, Rick Perry called out the National Guard, including armor and air units, “as a preventive measure upon the possible collapse of the Mexican State.”

This followed a year in which:

• In September 2008, Los Zetas members killed eight people and wounded more than 100 by tossing grenades into crowds of people celebrating Mexico’s independence in the city of Morelia.

• In December, eight soldiers were found tortured and decapitated in the resort town of Acapulco. The heads were stuffed in a plastic bag, left outside a shopping center with a note saying: “For every one of us you kill, we are going to kill 10.”

• In July, a group called La Familia, with whom Los Zetas apparently works, dumped the bodies of twelve federal police intelligence agents on a highway in Michoacán.

• At the end of August, a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez, on the Texas border, lined up the patients, and killed eighteen of them. On the same day, another 30 people were executed across Mexico.

Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon removed Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora from office because of concerns that the government is losing this war.

Threat To The United States

Right now, Los Zetas is primarily based in the border region of Nuevo Laredo, though they are believed to operate all along the border and in most parts of the country. There is also evidence that Los Zetas has spread to Texas.

Since late 2006, more than 80 United States law enforcement officers working on the U.S.-Mexico border at the local, state and federal level have been convicted of corruption-related charges, according to an Associated Press tally. They have helped Los Zetas move drugs as far as Delaware.

In August, it was revealed that Los Zetas smuggled $46 million worth of oil stolen from PEMEX into the United States, where it was sold to U.S. refineries using false import documents.

Following a joint investigation titled “Operation Black Jack” by the ATF, DEA, ICE, FBI and Homeland Security, American authorities raided two Los Zetas’s safe houses in Texas, freeing over 40 kidnapped individuals.

On October 26, 2008, the Washington Times reported that the FBI warned Texas law enforcement that Los Zetas had threatened “a full tactical response” should law enforcement interfere with their operations. In response, a leader of Los Zetas was arrested in Reynosa, Tamaulipas (a border city) on November 7, 2008. In that operation, the Mexican Army and Mexican Federal Police seized three safe houses and found 540 assault rifles, 287 grenades, 2 M72 Law rocket launchers, half a million rounds of ammunition, 67 ballistic vests and 14 sticks of dynamite.

Conclusion

So where do these guns that are plaguing Mexico come from? Where else would former military and police officers with deep connections to the Mexican police and military get modern American military hardware of the type provided by the American military to the Mexican military (but not available to average Americans)? Well, if you’re a liberal or journalist, apparently you think they’re buying this hardware from gun stores in Texas.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed before Mexico explodes. It is shameful that Team Obama would not only turn a blind eye, but would falsely try to convert the crisis they should be addressing into an opportunity to make false political points against lawful gun ownership in the United States.